Subhajit Banerjee

The world's favourite viral video repository is trying to bring together the best lectures from more than a 100 US universities, including MIT, Yale, Stanford and Harvard with the launch of its 'educational hub'.

YouTube EDU is a means to "collect and highlight all the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities", say the YouTube blog.

"Using YouTube as a vehicle to democratise learning is one of the coolest, unintended outcomes of the site's existence," it adds.

A directory of the institutions provides the number of videos hosted by them (MIT has 893 while Yale has 118) and along with individual lectures users can access more than 200 full courses.

Somewhat surprisingly, Watchmen the graphic-novel-turned-blockbuster-movie is currently dominating the newly launched hub. Science of Watchmen is on top of the most-viewed… Read More

The good people behind the Watchmen movie have released some more cool stuff.

First up, the Watchmen retro flash game.

Play as Night Owl or Silk Spectre in this arcade style beat 'em up game in all its 8-bit glory – something to bide your time with till the actual movie-spin-off game hits stores. The trailer for Watchmen: The End is Nigh, planned for Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows platforms, looks quite impressive.

Then, three clips from the film. Spoiler warning – those holding out for their first taste of Watchmen till the release date, look away now. For the rest here are Attention Citizens (Nite Owl and Comedian try to calm the crowd), Rescue (Nite Owl and Sil Spectre try to rescue Rorschach) and We can break into the Pyramid (Nite Owl and Rorschach argue over their plan).

Unless you have been on planet Krypton for two decades you will of course know that Watchmen is widely regarded as the greatest creation of the British comics writing genius (although my vote goes to V for Vendetta).

And unless you haven't logged on to the internet in the past six months at all, you will also know that the news of Watchmen being made into a film has caused a stir in the webosphere ("OK, big excitement. Just opened my mail. Invite, on 23rd February 2009 to UK premiere of…WATCHMEN !!! Boo Yah!," tweeted a super excited Jonathan Ross yesterday).

The story of Watchmen is a complex and layered one (as most of Moore's works are) set in an alternate Cold War era… Read More

Yes, it was 40 years ago today that Sgt Pepper and his band played live for one last time. Their music has hardly ever gone out of style in the four decades since and raised plenty of smiles from generations of new fans.

The afternoon of January 30, 1969 was when The Beatles surprised a central London office lunch crowd with an impromptu concert on the roof of their Savile Row Apple headquarters.

Before the outing was abruptly cut short by police who objected to the noise, the band (with a little help from young keyboardist Billy Preston) had managed to thrill Londoners on adjacent rooftops and the streets below with a run-through of songs they had been rehearsing with a vague album in mind. Their five-song set included Don't Let Me Down, I've Got a Feeling and Get Back – all considered classics in subsequent years.

After pulling all Warner Music videos off its site over a loyalty disagreement, a seemingly paranoid YouTube is now muting 'unauthorised' audio on all videos hosted on the site.

On Nickelback's Believe it Or Not, the Doors' LA Woman or even this fan-made trailer for Halo Wars, there is complete silence with a message informing viewers: "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled". The message is followed by a link to a page with details on how to avoid copyright infringement.

YouTube explains the move on a blog post entitled User Choice and Music Licensing: "Previously, when a music label or other rights owner issued a copyright claim to block audio, the video was automatically taken down. Uploaders had two choices: dispute the… Read More

A week into 2009, if you are already missing last year's chart toppers (however small the chances of that might be), why not try DJ Earworm's mashup therapy?

The resourceful DJ has combined bits of Billboard's Top 25 hits of 2008 into a four-and-a-half-minute track, aptly naming it United State of Pop.

"This year in the charts, we've gone all soft… less macho than in previous years," says Mr E. "Accordingly, I've selected Coldplay as the instrumental track, giving the whole year a sort of symphonic feel," he explains.

A couple of days ago, the world wide web was abuzz with the news that beta copies of Microsoft's new operating system Windows 7 has been leaked on torrent sites. In development since 2007, Windows 7 was unveiled in October 2008 and the first beta was due to be released at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. But a leaked version is already in circulation.

Understandably, there is a mad rush to try out the latest offering. On a well known (and notorious) Sweden-based torrent tracking site, one copy of the file has nearly 5,000 seeders (those who have got the full file) and nearly 6,000 leechers/peers (those still getting it).

So what can you look forward to in Windows 7? Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, reviewing the leaked OS on his ZDNet blog says Windows 7 installs faster and is more stable than Vista or even… Read More

He came, he partied like it was the Sixties all over again, and by the time the last note on the Hofner bass set off the fireworks display in the dark Liverpool sky, Sir Paul McCartney had more than conquered the city of his birth.

A true legend: Paul McCartney

Being a manic Macca fan but yet to see him live, I could not have chosen a better occasion than Sunday's Liverpool Sound concert at Anfield Stadium to witness the adulation and frenzy that a 65-year-old rocker – with clearly his best years behind him is still able to generate among an audience spanning ages six to 60.

The crowd encouragingly cheered local lads the Zutons when they opened the show. Leeds rockers Kaiser Chiefs, who followed, didn't fare badly either. But it was with the entry of James Paul McCartney (or Paul Mildred McCartney if you go with… Read More